Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada Archives

Founded in 1977, the Inuit Circumpolar Council has grown into a major international non-government organization representing 180,000 Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka (Russia) on matters of international importance.

The Canadian branch of ICC has established an archives as the keeper of ICC Canada and its predecessor body’s official records, documenting the work of ICC Canada. The Archives' collection of resources includes archival documents, photographs, and films; a library; and a collection of fine art and cultural artefacts. The Archives preserves and provides access to this documentary heritage for the benefit of present and future generations of Inuit across the circumpolar world.

In 2023, Andornot worked with ICC Canada archivists to build and host data management systems and a public search interface for these collections. Archival data is held in an Access to Memory (AtoM) system, while library and artefact records are managed using FileMaker PRO. Public search access is provided by an instance of our Andornot Discovery Interface, at https://iccc-archives.andornot.com All software and data is hosted by Andornot.

Of particular importance to this project was the ability to enter and search information in multiple languages and scripts, both on the data management side and in the public search interface. On the back-end, AtoM and FileMaker both allow entry of information in English using the Roman character set, as well as in Inuktitut using both the Roman Orthography and Syllabic scripts.

On the public side, the AnDI site provides three separate language-script interfaces: English, Inuktitut (Roman Orthography) and Inuktitut Syllabic. Users may toggle between these, with the entire interface and all search results then appearing in the chosen language. This allows someone fluent in Inuktitut to search with Syllabic words, and read results in the same language and script.

While the portion of the collection which is online is still small, it grows daily as archivists are able to describe more records in their possession.

This work complements our other recent work to enable display of Indigenous names and terms in Indigenous languages, from data management systems which don't support the character sets of these languages.